Back in 2006 I decided to cook all 1293 recipes in "The Gourmet Cookbook." It took a few years, but I made them all! Now I have moved on to the over 1100 recipes in "Gourmet Today." I anticipate several more years of kitchen fun!

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Alex and I picked this recipe because we wanted a quick side dish, and I love lima beans! This recipe wasn't so good though. Alex and I both had the same thought when we tasted it: lima bean baby food! I would have vastly preferred my lima beans not pureed. The flavor was ok -- it basically tasted like limas -- but the texture was distracting. It was hard to eat more than just a couple bites. The only advantage I can see to having pureed this dish is that you could probably pipe it decoratively, which would be quite elegant.

It seems to me that the key to being a good friend is figuring out the way that your friends each want to be loved and loving them in that way. Sometimes though I just don't know what to do. What do you do when you are trying really hard and still failing to care about a friend in the way that he or she wants to be cared about? What do you do when you try to be kind and you end up just angering your friend? For a while you can forgive yourself, and say that you just don't yet fully understand what that person wants from you. But after many months of friendship, shouldn't it get easier? I just hate feeling like I am a burden and I have a hard time dealing with people being angry at me, especially when I don't really understand what I did wrong. Today I tried to be nice and I offended a close friend. Now I feel terrible. The thing that makes me feel the worst is that it didn't even occur to me in the slightest that what I did was offensive. How am I supposed to not make the same sort of mistake again, if I had no idea I was making it this time?

Well, time for my cake decorating class. I will ponder these various issue while piping some lovely frosting roses. If anyone out there likes cake with really sugary frosting (think: grocery store cake) you should let me know. I think this class is going to result in lots of leftover cake that needs to be eaten!